[geeks] [rescue] Guns - what are they good for? - was Re: TME and Apple II and other Drive emulator questions.

[Phil Stracchino]

On 05/20/14 07:14, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> A couple quick thoughts:
> 
> As I pointed out earlier, suicide by gun shot accounts for about half of all
> gun deaths in the US, how you count a suicide by gunshot could seriously alter
> the ranking of the US in charts such as you linked to.

More like two thirds.

The last year that I had complete stats for broken down, they broke down
like this (all numbers approximated):

34,000 total firearm related deaths, of which:
21,000 suicides
8,000 criminal-on-criminal homicides, mostly drug-related, mostly 18-26
2,000 lawful self-defense shootings of felons
1,500 other miscellaneous homicides
1,000 felons shot by police
About 730 accidental deaths, mostly hunters in the field, about 30 of
them legally children

Contrast to typical gun-control claims of 38 children killed by firearms
every day.  How do you get 38 children killed by firearms in the US?
Simple.  You stretch the definition of "child" to include inner-city
gang-bangers.  Shazam!  Suddenly you just got another 8,000 "child"
deaths per year.

And yeah, armed private citizens shoot and kill roughly twice as many
criminals every year as the police do.


> As I noted earlier the US and Canada have similar suicide rates, but while
> half of US suicides are from gunshot wounds, half of Canadian suicides are by
> hanging. Following that logic, focusing on the method of murder can obscure
> the truth - when some one wants to kill someone else, they typically find a
> way to do it (poisoning, stabbing, hit-n-run, etc.) - don't equate gun
> homicides with murder.

Agreed.  Firearms account for roughly 25% of total US suicide attempts,
and 60% of successful suicides.  There's two principal reasons people
attempt suicide - the last-ditch desperate cry for help and attention,
and "Fuck it, I'm out of here."  The former tend to attempt
low-lethality methods like medication overdoses.  The latter tend to use
high-lethality methods like a firearm or jumping off a high bridge, they
are determined, and if there isn't a firearm available they are *going*
to find another way.

Homicide, with or without a firearm; suicide, with or without a firearm;
and accidents are three separate problems.  Homicides have been
declining steadily and consistently every year since a peak in the late
80s.  Accidents have been steadily declining, barring statistical noise,
since *their* peak in about 1930.

Suicide?  Nobody's talking about suicide.  Because respectable people
don't do that, and when they do, the coroner's report lists it as death
by accident or misadventure.  And when the *little* people commit
suicide, who cares?  It's somebody else's problem.  But when you DO talk
about suicides, you find that 2009 through 2013 had the highest suicide
rates ever in the US.


-- 
  Phil Stracchino
  Babylon Communications
  phils at caerllewys.net
  phil at co.ordinate.org
  Landline: 603.293.8485